stgulik

I should have done the boiling milk in the new pot thing last night, but I didn't so my bread-baking was a little delayed until I did that, waited for the pot to cool, and cleaned it, so the dough could do its second rise in it. The dough does rise, so that was not an issue at all. I might have overcooked it a titch - the bottom was a darker brown than I'd prefer - but it's a beautiful boule (pic). It only tasted okay, though, I guess we'll see how it tastes tomorrow and the day after, and with butter instead of cream cheese. *hands*

Then this afternoon I watched the Miracle on Ice documentary on Netflix, which was really good - that team is the reason I became a hockey fan, and specifically a Rangers fan, so they have a lot to answer for! Kidding! I'm kidding. It was lovely to see so many of them in the present, watching them watch their younger selves.

And then after dinner, I watched the s3 premiere of Shrinking, which made me laugh a lot and also tear up. They are all so ridiculous and I love them. And I read it already got renewed for a season 4! So that's good.

I also did the January recs update:

unfitforsociety has been updated for January 2026 with 17 story recs and 1 vid rec in 3 fandoms:

* 16 Heated Rivalry
* 1 The Good Place story and 1 Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra vid

If you are reading HR fic, there is probably nothing new there for you, since most of those recs came from you all, but maybe there's something new for you to enjoy? I still have so much Batfamily fic open in tabs that I want to get back to reading, and still more HR fic and some Pitt fic open as well. I've just been mostly unable to settle in with any of it, and have instead been slowly continuing my DCC reread, with occasional notes. *hands*

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As a post-Christmas treat, I bought myself this Emile Henry dutch oven and the instructions say to boil milk in it (and then clean it out) before using it the first time? I've never heard of that, but my other dutch ovens are enameled cast iron, not ceramic. Has anyone heard of this/done this?

anyway, mainly I bought it because I want to try this no-knead everything bread but didn't want to deal with my 6 qt cast iron dutch oven, which is extremely heavy and also tucked away in a closet somewhere. My plan is to mix it up tomorrow after work since it needs an on-the-counter overnight rise, and then bake it Saturday morning. We'll see how it goes!

I might also make garlic and bread soup again this weekend, and also maybe some version of citrus and soy noodles (it's a ramen recipe but I'm just going to use angel hair instead since I already have it) for dinner tomorrow. Oh, and those orange cranberry scones again - the cranberries are still taking up too much room in my freezer and must be used up!

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Today was super annoying because I had a very weird internet outage. Spectrum acknowledged that there was an outage in my area even! But it was only partial? Or intermittent? Just fucking weird. I could get to my work-related sites fairly frequently (outlook, sharepoint), but literally nothing else would load except for some reason gmail. Like, no news sites. No bank. No shopping sites. Bitwarden timed out trying to log into my password vault. I couldn't get anything at all to load on my personal laptop until I plugged in my phone to use it as a hotspot, which was greyed out and not allowed on my work laptop. Finally, around 4 pm when Spectrum said the outage was over but I still didn't have full service, I chatted with them and somehow their reboot of everything worked (even though I rebooted the modem and router several times on my own without any luck), so I was able to get full access to the internet on both laptops and on my TV. *hands*

In other news, I found that a stint overnight in the fridge greatly improved those cupcakes. I wasn't impressed by them at room temp (texture was super spongy), but they're really good with the extra time in the cold! So if you need vegan cupcakes, the KAB recipe is recommended, especially if you make them ahead of time.

Meanwhile, it looks like we might get a nor'easter this coming weekend? A big storm potentially, though with less snow and more wind. No warming of temperatures anyway. Oy.

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Over the past few days, I finally watched the most recent season of Only Murders in the Building and I enjoyed it tremendously. I feel like I laughed a lot more than I did last season. The thing that is so great about this show, other than all the other things that are great about it, is that the cast is so stacked that you can't play the "most famous guest star is the murderer" game. I mean, this season alone, we had ( spoilers )

In other news, we are - and possibly you are too - supposed to be getting a big winter storm this weekend so I'm thinking about baking plans. I will definitely post if I make something good. *g*

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